INDIA has a history of genocides, including between 200,000 and two million killings during Partition in 1947. At this stage, the killing legally defined as genocide occurs. Perpetrators do not view their victims as fully human. The term “extermination” captures the dehumanization in this genocidal process.
In genocides, killers think of their victims as diseases, insects, predators, or traitors who need to be exterminated to purify or “cleanse” the society. That is the origin of one of the most popular euphemisms for genocide – “ethnic cleansing” – a term invented by Milošević’s Serbian propagandists to deny the Bosnian Serb genocide of Muslims in Bosnia. The term was even adopted by the International Court of Justice in its erroneous decisions, Bosnia v Serbia and Croatia v Serbia. “Ethnic cleansing” has become a commonly used term among journalists and governments to deny and avoid using the term, Genocide.
Genocides d o not have to be destruction of a whole group. The Genocide Convention defines genocideas the intentional destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group “in whole or in part.” Most genocides are intended to destroy only part of a group. Genocides may also be gradual not sudden.
Frequently, men and boys of fighting age are murdered, as they were at Srebrenica, Bosnia. Educated members of a group may be targeted, as in the genocide of educated Hutus in 1971 in Burundi. Women in a group might be raped and forcibly impregnated to alter the genetic offspring of a group, as in Darfur,
Sudan and many other genocides. Current genocide in India is mainly by Hindus against Muslims. It takes the form of organized mob murders, often euphemized as “communal riots or communal violence” to make one-sided massacres appear two-sided. It is motivated by the Hindutva ideology of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It includes lynching and torturing Muslim men and boys, gang-raping Muslim women and girls, and destroying cultural and religious sacred places such as mosques.
Two thousand Muslims were murdered in the 2002 Gujarat pogroms while Narendra Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat. The 2002 massacre was India’s most deadly anti-Muslim pogrom since 1947. In February 2002, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims returning from a destroyed mosque in Ayodhya was attacked by a mob of Muslims and set on fire near Godhra, Gujarat. 58 Hindu passengers were burned to death.
Organised Hindu mobs reacted to the Godhra massacre by killing, torturing and raping Muslim men, women and children across Gujarat. 100,000 Muslims fled into displaced persons camps. Gujarat police did not intervene to stop the killings. Following the pogrom, only Muslims were arrested and tried.
Human Rights Watch reports that in the 2002 Gujarat massacres, Hindu men were provided with weapons and encouraged by Hindutva political and religious leaders to kill Muslims and rape Muslim women. Genocide Watch has published two reports documenting the 2002 massacres and the prevalence of rape during the 2002 pogrom. The prevalence of rape during genocidal massacres is motivated by the goal of destroying the target group’s reproductive autonomy. Mass rape is aimed at dominating a group’s genetic future. It is literally Gene-ocide.
The 2020 riots in Delhi killed at least fifty people, mostly Muslims. The pogrom happened during protestagainst the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), legislation that welcomed refugees from neighboring countries, but excluded Muslims. Modi’s Hindutva Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had just suffered an electoral defeat and Hindu leaders were angry.
In this volatile environment, Kapil Mishra, a BJP politician, delivered a speech that called for the forceful removal of peaceful anti-CAA protestors from the streets of Delhi. Riots against Muslims followed. Hindu mobs burned Muslim houses, shops, and mosques. Muslim women were raped and assaulted. Acid was thrown into the faces of Muslims. The police actively participated in the attacks. Police especially targeted female anti-CAA protestors. Hindu mobs attacked journalists covering the riots, burning their vehicles and equipment. Victim testimonies assert that police prevented ambulances and medical assistance from reaching Muslim neighborhoods.
During genocidal massacres, only rapid intervention by police and armed forces can stop killing. However, in India, the government and police have refused to intervene and have encouraged and participated in the pogroms and riots. The lack of accountability for those who commit these crimes against humanity is evident in the number of acquittals of Hindus who carried out the Gujarat massacres in 2002. Such impunity will only lead to more pogroms and more genocide against Indian Muslims.
— genocidewatch.com
